Contents

The magazine is broadly in two halves; the first has a double-page spread on each season (offering a breakdown by story, giving titles, number of episodes, writer and story synopsis) with articles and interviews between each season. The second half is up mostly of new Dalek fiction by Terry Nation and detailed plans to construct a life-size Dalek as seen on TV, followed by some behind-the-scenes profiles.

Originally available priced 30p, (UK) this magazine special was reprinted in 2003 and was offered exclusively through Radio Times.

An insert with all copies stated that;

“Every effort has been made to source the original photographs but regrettably, not all of the originals survive. In such cases, we have either used similar images or have re-scanned from the original magazine resulting in a slightly grainy image.

Following the pattern of the original magazine, the headings in the story guide are those of the first episode in each story, up to The Gunfighters, after which individual names were abandoned.

Please note that the information at the base of page 3 is largely out-of-date, as is the cover price of 30p!”

“Producer Barry Letts and Script Editor Terrance Dicks are the only full-time members of the Dr Who team. Says Letts: “Dr Who's success is that it doesn't have a formula – it's flexible. The Doctor's appeal is that he's a superman – and yet he's fallible. Supermen are always interesting, but they're that that much more interesting if they're a bit human too. And we try and make everything that happens scientifically plausible – like monsters landing in London – and interpret it as logically and realistically as possible. The Doctor is a good strongly moral man, who always searches for peaceful solutions.”

In late 1973 the outgoing production team of producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks encouraged Nation to explore the beginnings of the Daleks in a new storyline. Nation had contributed a Dalek serial to each of the previous two seasons — Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks — but his initial effort for season twelve had been rejected as too derivative of his earlier works. Starting anew with Letts' and Dicks' suggested approach, Nation crafted a new storyline called Genesis of the Daleks, produced by Philip Hinchcliffe and script edited by Robert Holmes, which veered away from the TV Century 21 and Radio Times versions of the Daleks' origins, and contradicted Nation's own history of the planet mentioned on-screen in The Daleks, too.